DRUG-TRACKING SYSTEM TO GET A MAKEOVER

Changes Should Cut Search Time From Hours To Minutes

FRANKFORT - Planned improvements to Kentucky's KASPER prescription-drug
tracking system should cut the time needed to answer doctors and law
officers looking for questionable activities to 15 minutes from four hours,
a health cabinet official said yesterday.

Efficiency gained by upgrad-ing of the computerized system should also give
cabinet personnel time to analyze data "pro-actively," looking for signs of
doctor shopping or pill abuse that ought to be investigated, Dr. Steve
Davis, a director in the Department of Public Health, told a new state
prescription drug abuse task force.

The group was created by the 2003 General Assembly. House Majority Leader
Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, the bill's sponsor, is co-chairman with Senate
President Pro Tem Dick Roeding, R-Lakeside Park.

The task force must develop recommendations by Oct. 1 for possible
legislation to help fight Kentucky's prescription drug problem. It is
specifically charged with looking for ways to improve KASPER (Kentucky
All-Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting).

Davis, whose department runs KASPER in the health cabinet, outlined several
enhancements already started with $1.4 million voted by the last legislature.

Most of that will go for $540,000 worth of hardware and software and
$850,000 in related development costs to greatly speed up the system, Davis
said.

KASPER was created in 1998 to record the names of patients who fill and
doctors who write prescriptions for drugs with high abuse potential. The
data can then be tapped by doctors or pharmacists checking on patients or
by law officers conducting drug investigations.

The Kentucky system, praised nationally, "is the best. But no one
anticipated the volume of use," said Stumbo. "It was set to handle 1,500
requests a year; Last year there were 96,510. We need some changes."

Davis told the task force that the goal is to cut response time to 15
minutes or less from four hours or more and to make KASPER available around
the clock. Doctors, who account for 87 percent of the use, especially want
a patient's drug history while the person is still present.

Efficiencies would come from automation of data entry, production of
reports and delivery on the Internet. Most work is done by hand and on
paper now.

Time saved can be used to analyze the more than 32 million prescriptions on
file for such things as unusual prescribing volumes in a certain area,
Davis said.

"We can see where the juice is worth the squeeze, where activities should
be focused" by law officers and doctors, he said.

Several task force members encouraged such use of KASPER to "flag" problems
earlier, though some worried about patient privacy. Such analysis wouldn't
violate strict laws already in force, Davis said. He said the KASPER
statutes allow such analysis but he said there's been no time for it.